World’s Fight Against Malaria at Risk on Funding Gap, WHO Says

Progress in the fight against
malaria may be at risk after funding to combat the world’s
third-deadliest infectious disease stagnated between 2010 and
2012, the World Health Organization said.

Global funding for malaria control remained at $2.3 billion
in 2011, the WHO said in its annual World Malaria Report today.
Money available for combating the mosquito-borne disease is
expected to peak at about half of the $5.1 billion that’s needed
annually to provide bed nets, tests and drugs to all the people
who need them, the WHO said.

Malaria killed 660,000 people in 2010, mostly children
under five, according to today’s report. The disease is
concentrated in 14 endemic countries, including Nigeria, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo and India, and an expansion of
measures to combat malaria helped avert 1 million deaths in the
past eight years, according to the WHO.

Measures such as a tax on financial transactions or airline
tickets, or a sale of “malaria bonds” may be necessary to
raise funds, Fatoumata Nafo-Traore, head of the Roll Back
Malaria Partnership, said in a statement. The partnership is a
collaboration between donors, countries, non-government
organizations and United Nations agencies.

Targets for reducing malaria won’t be reached unless
progress is accelerated in the countries that have the highest
incidence, Robert Newman, the director of the WHO Global Malaria
Programme, said in the statement.

“These countries are in a precarious situation and most of
them need urgent financial assistance to procure and distribute
life-saving commodities,” he said.

Fifty countries are on track to cut their rate of malaria
cases by 75 percent by 2015 from 2000, in line with global
targets. Still, those countries only represent 3 percent of
estimated malaria cases in 2000, the WHO said.